[-] drosophila 14 points 3 weeks ago

I don't understand the "computer girl" one, did the technician think that her being a woman meant she was doing computer science instead of physics?

[-] drosophila 14 points 1 month ago

There's never enough money to maintain the browser but there's always enough to dump more into executives pockets.

[-] drosophila 14 points 2 months ago

Reminds me of this infographic:

Its my understanding that its less "by land vs by sea" and more "the area with the largest ports happened to have a regional dialect that pronounced the word slightly differently". Japan got their tea by sea, but not from those ports.

[-] drosophila 15 points 3 months ago

I've had my current CPU for longer than the Confederacy existed.

I am about to replace it though.

[-] drosophila 14 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Are you misreading “preparing” as literally any writing

"Prepare derivative works" means not just any writing, but literally anything creative. If you paint a picture of a character from a book, using specific details described in that book such as their appearance and name, you are creating a derivative work.

https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/78442/what-is-considered-a-derivative-work

Even that Wikipedia article goes into fair use.

Fair use carves out an exception for parody, criticism, discussion, and education. "Entertainment" or "because I like the series and these characters" are not one of those reasons. Fan fiction might qualify as parody though.

What effect on the market can there be for a fan remaster of a 20 year old game that isn’t for sale anymore? Hard to argue that doesn’t fall under fair use.

This is not how "the effect of the use upon the potential market for or the value of the copyrighted work" part of fair use works.

A company can create a work, sit on it for literally 100 years doing nothing with it and making not a single cent from it, then sue you for making a nonprofit fan work of it. Steamboat Willie is 95 years old and until just this year you could have been sued for drawing him. Note that, in the eyes of the law, Steamboat Willie is effectively a different character than Mickey Mouse.

Again, I cannot stress enough how it doesn't matter at all whether you are personally profiting from something or whether you are affecting a market. The word "potential" in that quote above is doing a lot of work:

A father in the UK wanted to put spiderman on the grave stone of his 4 year old son who loved the character. Disney said "no". Disney does not make tombstones. You are not eating into their profits by putting spiderman on a tombstone. And yet in the eyes of the law Disney has every right to stop you since they might decide to start up a tombstone business next week.

Nothing I have written here is legal advice.

EDIT: I am not a fan of any of this. I think you should be able to write nonprofit fanfiction without worrying that some corporation might sue you. I am on your side on this. But this is the reality we live in.

[-] drosophila 13 points 5 months ago

The sculptor must've looked at all those statues that have cloth draped over bodies and said "I can do you one better".

[-] drosophila 13 points 6 months ago

That's a very dumb name, but I really like the simple design and earth tone color of the bar itself.

On the other hand I don't think I'd like to smell like beer.

[-] drosophila 14 points 7 months ago

I vibe with this a lot. I don't think the movie needed to exist in the first place, and if it did it would probably be better if it were fully animated, but nothing about the trailer provoked any strong emotions in me.

I'm not going to watch it but I also didn't go "wow this is an insult and a tragedy".

I guess I'm happy for all the tiny children that are gonna watch it and probably love it though.

[-] drosophila 13 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Damn Small Linux can run a graphical desktop environment with as little as 16 MB of RAM (although 24 is recommended).

That really makes me want to see a Wii with a mouse and keyboard plugged in displaying a spreadsheet or something. Unfortunately DSL only supports x86. Theoretically it could be ported to PPC like Void Linux was, though I don't know if all the tweaks they did to make the kernel and pre-installed packages as small as possible would make that harder.

[-] drosophila 14 points 9 months ago

That article seems ai generated.

[-] drosophila 14 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

"Asshole" is the word for a guy who likes to cut people off in traffic. I think there's probably a more appropriate word for someone who emotionally manipulates you over the course of years so you're continually a nervous wreck and can be destroyed any time it's convenient for him. Seriously if you haven't watched the interview I linked at least look at the first couple of minutes.

And at the end of the day, who did this behavior actually benefit? Steve helped make Apple a lot of money, sure, but where did most of that money go? It didn't go to the employees he abused, that's for sure. But maybe Apple products ended up benefitting society as a whole, and without Steve we wouldn't have had that? Well you already said that more often than not Apple's success didn't have anything to do with technical superiority.

The fact that people like this (Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, etc) often head successful companies isn't an example of how beneficial they are, it's an example of how broken our system is.

view more: ‹ prev next ›

drosophila

joined 10 months ago